1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print job management system which manages print jobs to be processed by an image forming apparatus and a control method thereof, an information processing apparatus, and a print server and, more particularly, to a method associated with a status notification of a print job in the print job management system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, especially in case of printing in a large-scale environment, it is a common practice to temporarily spool a print job in a print server and to then send the print job to a printer in place of directly sending a print job from a personal computer (PC) operated by the user to the printer. In case of such printing via the print server, the print server periodically sends an inquiry about a status of the sent print job to the printer, thus managing the print job.
In recent years, a service is available that is called cloud computing (to be referred to as “cloud” hereinafter) which allows the user to use only computer resources needed on a large-scale data center connected via the Internet. Using this service, a print server can be allocated on the cloud. Use of the cloud can provide various merits. For example, the need for hardware management can be obviated, and it is easy to add resources according to the load on the server. When the print server is allocated on the cloud, a firewall is normally set between the printer and print server in terms of security, and the print server side cannot directly send a print job to the printer side. For this reason, as the sequence of a print job, a PULL type (pull-print) sequence in which the printer acquires a print job from the print server is adopted in place of a PUSH type (push-print) sequence in which the print server sends a print job to the printer.
On the other hand, conventionally, a client-side script technique is known as a Web technique. The client-side script does not specify a specific script language, but JavaScript® is normally used. When a Web browser accesses a Web server, the JavaScript is returned from the Web server as a response, and is executed on the Web browser.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-282311 discloses a technique which allows a network multifunction peripheral (MFP) including a Web server function to return the JavaScript in response to an information acquisition request from a Web browser. The JavaScript includes a script which periodically sends an information acquisition request to the network MFP, and device and job statuses can be displayed on the Web browser in real time without requiring any user operations. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-129006 discloses a technique which allows a print management server to return the JavaScript in response to a print request from a Web browser. The JavaScript includes a script which notifies the print management server of a print execution result, and can automatically notify the print management server of a result after completing printing.
A case will be assumed wherein a print server is allocated on the cloud in a print system using the print server. As described above, since a firewall exists between a printer and the print server, the printer sends an acquisition request of a print job to the print server. Likewise, when the print server manages a status of a print job, the printer has to notify the print server of the status of the print job to update the status of the print job managed on the print server.
However, when the printer somehow fails to notify the print server of the status of the print job, the print server can no longer detect the actual status of the print job. For example, when the power supply of the printer is turned off/on before completion of the print job, the print job itself is deleted in the printer. For this reason, the printer can no longer notify the print server of the status of that print job. As a result, in the print server, that job unwantedly has a “print in progress” status indefinitely, thus posing a problem.